Cultural Marxist Utopia

I went to Ascot recently, which doesn't seem a promising start to an item about the Left. It was for the Red Bull Air Races and it was my first visit to this mecca of horse racing. Happily could be my last. What moron put such a large and prestigious venture in a town centre?

The queues to park were horrendous, they forgot to effectively relabel the car parks and the tickets for the 'Grandstand', permitted you to stand on the grass in front of the Grandstand. Must speak to Trading Standards about that.

Anyway, Ascot race course seems a grubby, badly organised place as you arrive, but is really quite fabulous. Good luck to all those lucky enough to have the wealth to really get the best out of the place. I mean that, I have no fear or loathing of rich people.

The day was fine and the racing close. We left early though, to avoid what must, has to be bedlam as everyone leaves at the same time. And this is my point, not the event or the venue but the journey.

Perhaps foolishly I went there mainly by motorway. Well, I still call them motorways and I think that is their retained official title, but they are now some kind of Marxist Utopia. Firstly, in a way of taxing that led to Magna Carta in the first place, cameras to calculate average speeds have been erected alongside, expensive and sophisticated gantries and signs, to allow our very own Stasi to manipulate road speeds.

These displays are operated like a child playing with Buckaroo; just for the users entertainment. We used to just have the idiot matrix board, always displaying a message about something that happened yesterday or offering some pointless 'advice', now they tell you that there is congestion. In real time. And they know there is congestion because a) they can see it on yet more cameras and b) they caused it.

Yes, a key reason for the variable speed limits (after fund raising, naturally) is to cause congestion, which then allows them to further lower speed limits and hopefully catch more people out who can't remember what the last set of 'instructions for driving' were.

If you have experienced this, or if you are fairly normally perceptive, you will realise that this creates dangerous situations and you would be right. But the variable speed limits are for your safety. Or for the safety of people who may at some point have been working in the road, but aren't now.

So we are treated to broad expanses of three and four lane roads, motorways, that used to be the safest of our roads, now reduced to desperate drivers watching signs as to whether they need to slow down further and trying to keep current with the last change, terrified of a possible fine, points and/or loss of licence. At no point has any hint of danger emanated from their driving, though has been introduced by constant vigilance to signs and the sudden need to brake

This braking caused by all the traffic concatenating due to all travelling at 40mph and lorries, now able to change lanes to 'overtake'. It is horrendous, stressful and dangerous, but it serves a very important purpose. For too long, drivers have been able to make decisions, repeatedly on how to drive. Firstly, speed limits were introduced, then technology meant they could be enforced more strictly but motorways still evaded the Left's need to control.

Average speed cameras and variable speed limits were the solution. All you need to do, is slow the traffic until cars, coaches and lorries are all travelling at the same speed. Cars that used to pass a given area at 70 (or so) miles per hour, now traverse it much more slowly at 50, or 40 mph. People lane change to seek some small advantage, lorries included.

So all the spaces that such fast travel allowed are now taken up by a solid mass. You know this is true, because the 'congestion' clears the moment the 'limits' are lifted. But you don't get to make decisions, you do what you are told. You are conditioned just a bit more to accept the dead, controlling hand of the State.

And you know if the subject ever comes up on the TV some idiot will, quite happily and to camera say, 'yes, but if it's keeping us safer.....'. Seeing this sort of thing must make Cultural Marxists sigh with satisfaction, that someone has accepted their prole status, knows their place.

So yes, our motorways, with variable speed gantries and average speed cameras are an example of the Marxist Utopia we are heading for. Just remember that before you grumble about your journey in future. It is for the greater good.